


Because I Clasped the Clouds as Mine.

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dante's POV, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 16:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10835334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: Ten times Dante knew he was hopelessly in love with Ari.(And the one time Dante knew it wasn't hopelessly.)





	Because I Clasped the Clouds as Mine.

  1. The boy looks at him and he _looks_ at him. Dante likes him immediately because of that. Not enough people, he think, really look at others. And the boy's eyes are dark and soulful and honest and lonely, so lonely and he aches for this mysterious, dark eyed, lonely eyed boy.  
  
So he smiles at him again and offers to teach him how to swim, hoping that whatever he sees in him, whatever he might find in him, won't scare him off.  
  
  

  2. There's a half done sketch of Ari's eyes, a long curl of hair near his left eye. A scribble of his mouth that Dante got too nervous to try and finish. Ari's hands holding the book Dante brought.  
  
If there was a way, Dante thinks he'd like to sketch Ari's voice. He wishes there was a way for it.  
  
He only finishes one sketch properly that afternoon well, two, but he's not sure he counts the rocking chair as one because that's him being a wiseass, which Ari will know when he sees it, and that's done after Ari falls asleep. The book leaning against his chest, his face turned to the side, one hand gently curled on the pillow by his face, the shadows under Ari's eyes smoothed over with the afternoon light and his expression soft and easy with his dreams.  
  
He hopes that they were good dreams.  
  
"Ari?" he says softly, but Ari doesn't wake up, doesn't even move.  
  
Dante's fingers suddenly itch with wanting to move that mischievous curl of hair from Ari's face, curl it behind his ear.  
  
Instead he grabs his things, leaves the sketch on Ari's desk, and leaves.  
  
  

  3. There is one kindness to the whole thing.  
  
He doesn't see the accident.  
  
But he hears it-- the bird tweeting in his hands getting silenced over the screech of tires, Ari screaming his name, the sound his arm makes as it cracks against the sidewalk, the sound a one-hundred-and-twenty-pounds-body makes as it slams against a car going at 50 miles per hour, Ari screaming in agonized pain--  
  
And then there's _nothing_ and he ignores the pain in his arm, tries twice to get his legs to work again and to stand up and--  
  
The driver is pushing his hands through his hair, looking around, and Dante can see his dad on the doorway already running towards him but all he can see is Ari, on the floor, bleeding and broken and not moving and there must be sound, he thinks, people talking and screaming and people probably calling for an ambulance, for the police, for someone because _Ari isn't moving Ari is on the floor not moving why isn't he moving he should be moving he was moving a moment ago he was okay..._  
  
And then the noise all comes back in one moment and he's screaming and screaming and screaming.  
  
  

  4. If his life was a storybook, the first time he says 'I love you' to someone who isn't his mom or dad, then Dante would get an 'I love you, too' as an answer.  
  
What he gets, instead, is Ari Mendoza's black eyes looking at him as if Dante was... something. Someone. Not him. Which--  
  
Which he always knew was going to be the answer. And still, it's said. It's done. It's out there.  
  
Dante loves Ari. The world has changed. The world continues to be the same.  
  
  

  5. Chicago is gray and windy and huge and noisy and cold and Ari-less. Which Dante had thought would be--  
  
Not good. He hasn't, not once, not ever since he met Aristotle Mendoza that he has ever thought that being in a world without Ari would be a good thing and, considering that for a few moments he feared that he would be existing in an Ari-less universe, he is pretty certain that that would be his very own circle of hell.  
  
But distance, he thought, might have helped. His abuelita always used to say how time and distance heal all wounds, and Chicago might have very well been another planet, by how far it was from Texas and summer-blue-skies and brown skin  and a smile that doesn't quite dimple, because it's like a bird, that smile, it's startled and then it flies and it's free and you're a better person, from watching that. From watching a bird fly. From watching Ari smile.  
  
And that, that's what Chicago was supposed to help with. Not with the missing, but with the achepangneed _ache_ that seems to carve inside of Dante until he sometimes feels he's hollow, like a cave shaped like a boy. Chicago was supposed to take care of it all. His wanting to kiss boys and hold hands with boys and maybe even have sex with boys and and and Chicago was supposed to take _this part of missing Ari_ away.  
  
It only makes him miss him more.  
  
  

  6. Since he learned how to swim, Dante has liked seeing how long he can hold his breath. When he was little and his parents took him to swim, his dad and he would make competitions out of it, they'd blow up their cheeks like squirrels and then dunk under the water and see who lasted longer.  
  
Dante loves the feeling of his lungs burning and the desperate way his body tells him he needs to breath and he needs air, how urgent everything feels, and how fucking _sweet_ the first breathe of air tastes when he finally lets go.  
  
Seeing Ari again after almost a whole years feels like that, but tenfold: he feels the ache in his lungs as he finally gets a proper breath and his heart beats like crazy. And then he's hugging Ari and Ari is hugging back and, just for one second, everything is alright with the world.  
  
  

  7. Daniel is cute, in a very American, un-Mexican way. A little shorter than Dante. Not much, just about two or three inches. Tanned skin for a white boy, a small nose. Thin lips, the top one a little fuller than the bottom one.  
  
He has dark, longish curly hair that falls just so over his dark brown eyes and he has squared-fingered hands that like to touch him. They like to touch his back, his arms, his hands. And when he kisses him Dante can imagine one kiss, different from this one, and he can pretend that hands that are very similar to Daniel's hands are the ones touching him, that the curly dark hair he's threading his fingers through belongs to someone else.  
  
"You know, if we went by nicknames, we'd be Dan and Dan," Daniel laughs as he says it. He's always laughing. Making him laugh is so, so easy, not victory whatsoever to make him smile or happy.  
  
"Yeah," Dante agrees. "Imagine that."  
  
  

  8. Ari falls asleep besides him. Dante's fault, really: his head is on Ari's shoulder, keeping him trapped, and Ari is too much of a good person to wake him up when he's hurt, when he fell asleep because he was crying, because the world is a terrible place that doesn't deserve birds nor art nor magic or music or sunlight and Dante wanted to believe it could be better and it isn't, and this is probably what Icarus felt, before he fell to the sea. Dante hurts in places that go deeper than his bruises.  
  
But Ari's fault, too, because he's there and he keeps on being there and he is warmth and sun and everything that's good in this world and he cries again, silently this time, presses his face against Ari's chest and cries silent, scalding tears, because this is,  he knows, what Icarus felt too, before he realized he was losing his wings, when he was up there and feeling the sunlight and thinking 'nothing else matters but this'.  
  
Nothing else matters but this.  
  
  

  9. He's not reading a book, when his mom walks into his room. The book is open and he's reading the words, but the words don't like him lately and they don't stick. When his mom touches his head he sighs, puts it against his chest and looks up at her and even manages to get her a smile.  
  
"Dinner is going to take a little longer," his mom says. "But I'm thinking of having some mango with piquín. Want some?"  
  
"Don't eat that, my baby brother is going to get a tummy ache," Dante scoffs, sitting up, raising his hand and looking at his mom for her nod before he puts his hand to the curve of her belly, hoping for a kick, but his baby brother must be sleeping.  
  
His mom is laughing at him, her arm around Dante's shoulders in an almost hug. "I ate lots of thing with chile piquín when I was expecting you, and nothing happened."  
  
Dante bites his answer, the 'well, there you go, no wonder I'm gay, then, you have no-one to blame except yourself' that he knows would come out more bitter than it should, as if food had anything to do with it. If it was that simple.  
  
"Dante?" His mom asks, and these past few days have been great at him learning all the different ways people can make a question out of his name.  
  
"If I stop being friends with Ari, will you and dad get mad?"  
  
"No," his mother doesn't doubt, doesn't pause, doesn't even consider it, just rubbing his back. "But we're still going to love Ari, even if you stop doing it. We will always love you more. But he is part of our heart too."  
  
Which makes him glad, and then it doesn't, and then it does, and when he starts crying, his mom sighs as if her heart was breaking and Dante wants to tell her to stop, because that much hurt can't be good for the baby, but he can't get enough words to work out of his mouth, around all the pieces of his own broken heart, and he's glad, but it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so damn much.  
  
  

  10. Once, for school, Dante ended up reading a whole damn lot about gangrene.  
  
It wasn't the original thing he had to be researching, not really, but he was reading about war and soldiers, and there was a mention of amputation, and that ended up with Dante being incredibly grossed out but unable to stop reading about gangrene, about how some wounds ended up festering and rotting and poisoning the blood and the only way that doctors could save that person's life was to cut off the infection, things like fingers or arms and legs and how it was a matter of life or death.  
  
Which is, he thinks, what he has to do with Ari. Because his love for Ari, his constant _acheneedwantneedache_ for Ari, for Ari's hands and mouth and hair and smile and lips is killing him, Dante thinks, and it's poisoning him and, if he doesn't put a stop to it now, before it's too late, it'll end up poisoning Ari too and it'll kill them both. It'll turn Ari into the kind of person he doesn't want to be, the kind of person who'd make his parents cry in worry, the kind of person who'd end with split knuckles and split lips and maybe split heads bleeding over sidewalks. And it'll turn him into someone who will keep on kissing boys trying to search for the fragments of Ari he might see, this one because he has dark eyes, and that one has his hair, and that one has squared-fingers hands.  
  
So he has to. He has to do it, no other thing to do, no other way. He has to amputate Ari from his life, from his heart, he has to cutcutcut through every single part of his body and heart and soul that scream for Ari, and he knows that it'll hurt them, a lot, a lot a lot, that the pain might be almost too much, but maybe that's what they need.  
  
So that maybe, maybe, eventually once the wound heals, they can go back to being friends, because Dante doesn't want his life to be without Ari, not forever, not ever.



  
*

(Dante remembers, about a year and a lifetime ago, holding a small little bird with a broken wing between his hands and he remembers the way its tiny little heart was beating wildly and he remembers marveling at how fragile the little thing was and trying to tell it that it was going to be okay and to not be afraid.

It's not a happy story, that one. The bird dies.

But, standing in the desert with Ari looking at him, telling him to remember the pain he felt when Ari told him he didn't feel that way, except Ari is looking at him and asking him and telling him he lied... Dante keeps remembering that feeling, holding a small, wounded, fragile little thing with broken wings and a frantic little beating of its heart going thumpthumpthumpthump so, so scared of being hurt again...

"Try it again. Kiss me."

... except this time, the bird's wings aren't broken and it gets to fly.

"No. You kiss me.")


End file.
